Why do Russians want to receive Ukrainian citizenship?

An article on the popular Russian website caused a heated discussion on social networks. The article was titled “Instructions: How to receive Ukrainian citizenship”.

It appeared on the website on 6 April – the day when the European Parliament voted for Ukrainian visa-free regime.

What do the Kremlin media like to speak about Ukraine and typical Russians repeat kindly? They say about anarchy and chaos in Ukraine, that the country degrades and is on the verge of bankruptcy and so on. But the EU agreed to grant visa-free regime for Ukraine and anti-Ukrainian rhetoric, at least among people, quieted down a little. Moreover, a lot of Russians begin to remember what ties them with Ukraine?

Of course, the last three years of crackdown in Russia caused thousands of people to leave their homeland. For example, during this period more than 6,500 Russians received Ukrainian citizenship.

However, for the present we have got another case. A lot of Russians do not like isolation of Russia. Especially young and middle aged people. However, they are afraid to oppose the system and look for workarounds into the free world. Actually, it appears that the idea of using Ukrainian citizenship for travelling into Europe has been forefront in Russians’ minds for long. That explains such rapid publishing the article which clearly explains how to receive the Ukrainian passport.

There are dozens of sites on the Internet that provide services of receiving Ukrainian citizenship. So the laws of market say that demand creates offer. It means demand is considerable.

It would seem that citizenship is a serious thing which cannot be got easily. However, it turns out we do not look in our laws and do not know that is not so difficult to get the Ukrainian passport. There is a reduced system for obtaining citizenship whereby it is enough to prove that you have some relatives here or anybody of them lived here at least once. As you know, corruption is not brought down in our country yet which means it is not difficult to buy such papers.

I certainly understand that we are a hospitable nation and welcome all who come to us with good intentions, but we might not ladle out our passports!

By no means, all of Russians who now rush toward documents on our citizenship respect Ukraine and Ukrainians.

But the problem is easy to be resolved. I propose to legislate the rule: when getting Ukrainian citizenship each candidate should be asked: “Whose is the Crimea?” And only two options should be: “Ukrainian” or “Russian”. The answers should be recorded on a video and shared online. Then it will be clear who and for which purpose need our citizenship – to live here or to dash over to Europe. The fact is that according to the Russian laws criminal liability is provided for denial of belonging the Crimea to Russia. So if you want to have the Ukrainian passport – please, burn your bridges.